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| The excellent Head Lopper by Andrew MacLean. |
I often think about Fighters. I also like what others have written about fighters.
A regular discussion on the OSR discord has been the various ways in which people boost Fighters to make them feel a bit more like the archetype they promise, yet sometimes fail to deliver in the eyes of people.
I think LotFP did a step in the right direction, by allowing only the Fighter to get basic attack bonus.
I say go one step further. Only Fighters get to participate in combat.
Sounds silly when written out like this, but why? Class-based systems are mostly about carving out a niche. You pick the role you want to do in the game, and the system provides those with a handy class. Often the issue with why certain classes feel "weak" or "boring" or whatever other negative you want to assign to them is because another class (or multiple classes!) are intruding upon their niche.
Magic-users can cast spells. Clerics can turn-undead. Thieves can Backstab. And so Fighters should Fight.
If you want to engage in combat as a mechanic, then make it so the Fighter is the only Player Class who gets to do that. If you want to concede some ground on this, maybe allow combat hirelings to fight at half the effectiveness of a Fighter.
There you go. The Fighter now is back to having their niche well protected by incursion from literally every other PC.
this is ridiculous. if the party is attacked, does everyone else simply stand around limp while the monsters slit their throats? why would anyone go into a dungeon in the first place if they weren't at least somewhat prepared for violence???
ReplyDeleteWell do you want me to give you the real response ("This post is mostly a joke, don't worry about it.") or the less real response? The less real response is - yeah, you get killed by the monsters in the dark if you don't have someone to defend you. Who says everyone in a dungeon should be able to fight? Who says they should be able to inflict violence? Sure, that's how the vast majority of people play D&D, but I don't think that inherently is the only true or good way. Hell plenty of people have pointed out that OSR dungeon crawls are closer to horror than to heroic fantasy, and guess what - in horror most people don't get to fight back the monster. They do, in fact, stand around limp as their throats are slit.
DeleteThis, btw is not the real answer because this is not what the post is about. This is about protecting class niches within the mechanics of the game. If you don't care about that, then it doesn't matter. If you simply pick the other route of removing classes entirely from the game (a not unpopular choice) then it also doesn't matter. But if you're going to have classes as a role that someone picks saying what they want to do in the game, then...fuck it, just let the roles stick within their lanes. Or not. Who cares.
I love how incredulous the replier is. "What else would everybody do?!"
ReplyDeleteIf there was a fight in front of me, and my friend in riot gear was fighting, I absolutely would not join the fight. I am a normal person.
Also, this is similar to the proposition I had in my Marcher Lord campaign - only knights fight.
I strongly disagree with this. This is taking a mistaken premise that entered D&D, that classes are about carving out a niche, and then tripling down on it. This is not the way. The way is to go back and undo the original mistake, not pick it up and run with it!
ReplyDeleteThe reason the fighter became the meathead who only does combat is because other classes (such as thief/rogue) carved out chunks of everything ELSE he used to do, which also left those new classes with the same problem.
In your opinion then what is the purpose of classes, if not to separate roles during the game? Because if I want characters that are all broadly able to do everything at least a bit, I would not pick a class-based system like OD&D or B/X, I'd stick with something like RuneQuest.
DeleteI just saw this post was a joke, but it was linked to me and defended as genuine and I had a big response written. Fml.
DeleteWell, I consider the fighter suggestion to mostly be a joke to help give people the extreme end point of niche protection. I've also had plenty of responses of this of people actually sayjng this is an approach they quite like and feel could work in the context of OSR play.
DeleteYour issue seems to be with the description of classes or roles in RPGs as niches with distinct activities allowed or denied based on the class. To me that is why you have classes in fantasy gaming - to help show people what they generally can or can't do. Howbwe you are saying this is not the case and I am curious what is it you think the function of classes is in D&D then.
No that's not my issue. My issue is when niche protection is taken to mean "nobody else can touch this a except Mr This Situation".
DeleteThis post really resonates with what I feel about fighters, never in my life have I wanted to play a fighter for probably these reasons, they don't seen unique enough and most other classes can do what they do, most often better.
ReplyDeleteWhen I eventually decide to make my own OSR-system, as most people do, I will take this greatly in consideration. Maybe Fighters should be the only ones allowed to properly fight, yes, or at least excell greatly at it. Each class should have something that only they can do, something unique, a unique mechanic. The fighter should fight.
I am glad it resonated with you. I've had a few people tell me that this (what is, ultimately) "hot take" really made them stop and think about the role of fighters in class-based OSR games.
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